Girl on the Moon

by Burnett, Jack McDonald

  The Criminal

  February–March, 2036

  There was a target on Conn’s back. She fired the company that provided her bodyguards, and brought in a new agency that operated on the east coast and not in California—one that wouldn’t have been compromised already. It cost a great deal extra, but it was worth it.

  At the same time, she was under pressure from her lawyers to rein in expenses while Laura contested Peo’s will. But Gasoline Alley paid for itself, and the revenue from pressure fields was nothing short of astonishing (if unsustainable, once other companies perfected their development), so the company wasn’t bleeding money like it had been in the run-up to the Saturn and moon missions. And there was little question that Conn needed protection.

  Far from silencing her, the assassination of Brett Lipton and her own close call made Conn more active in politics, and in pro-Pelorian activities. She authorized a marketing blitz for the pressure fields Dyna-Tech had developed. Advertisement wasn’t a necessary expense as yet; everyone who could use a pressure field knew where to get them. But Conn’s aim was to demonstrate the good that had already come of a cooperative relationship with the Pelorians.

  A sixty-second spot during the broadcast of Super Bowl LXX in late February demonstrated the technology, branded by Dyna-Tech as SafeTfields, or T-fields. One segment showed a man with a camera (inside the pressure field) walking through a white-hot, controlled chemical fire. One showed a woman swimming a mile beneath the surface of the ocean, in nothing but a wetsuit and breathing apparatus. One showed men and women working outside at Gasoline Alley. That was all possible now thanks to Pelorian technology. As for the future: one segment looked forward to when aircraft would be fitted with the tech; one portrayed an open-vehicle orbital tour of the moon; and one showed a hale, street-clothed man at the summit of a mountain.

  Luan Yongpo was fascinated by his work with Dyna-Tech and eager to be part of the solution to the fifth-dimensional travel problem, but Conn could also see that he was lonely and suffering from culture shock. She began taking him out for dinner and to hockey games and movies. She enjoyed their time together, and he wasn’t too freaked out by the bodyguard that always accompanied them.

  Conn believed him when he said that he didn’t strike the deal for nitrogen power. The Pelorians only asked him questions about China’s government, how it saw its place in the world, who it considered allies and potential enemies—Yongpo was nervous that he’d given them classified information, as flustered and distraught as he had been. “We know all about the United States,” they told him. “Not your nation.” He had no idea what China was giving the Pelorians in exchange for the nitrogen power technology. He was out of the loop even before he defected.

  Nor did he take off from the moon and abandon Conn of his own volition. He hadn’t even been looking for her—he didn’t know she was in trouble. He lifted off when ordered, even though the timing was wrong and he had to wait an hour and a half for a rendezvous with his command module.

  Conn asked whether Cai Fang might have sabotaged her lander before he died, and Yongpo looked stricken. He genuinely didn’t believe Cai had anything to do with Conn’s almost being marooned on the moon.

  Conn didn’t anymore, either. She believed she had dated and slept with the person who had tried to kill her. It made her sick. The damage she, and only she, could do to the US propaganda machine by accurately translating their snippets of Pelorian language into English (and by being the most famous woman in the world) made her a unique threat. They wanted her to stop, in the very worst way. Marooning her on the moon hadn’t worked, so now they were taking a more conventional approach to killing her.

  In March, the Pelorians on the moon shot down an unmanned reconnaissance probe, one of several launched over the months by the US government.

  Perhaps the Pelorians thought it was there to bomb them; perhaps they were just sick of all the probes flying by. Either way, the government accepted the gift, and Congress declared war.

  Conn was ordered by the US District Court for the Northern District of California to cease all activities which might give aid and comfort to the Pelorians. She had her lawyers appeal the order to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge tribunal ruled two to one that the overbroad order violated Conn’s rights of free speech and conscience. An emergency en banc hearing was held, and the court as a whole upheld the decision.

  Congress then passed a law stripping the Ninth Circuit Court of its appellate jurisdiction over orders of the lower court respecting Pelorians. The court order against Conn was reinstated.

  Conn tiptoed around the order for ten days, doing nothing that could reasonably, or even unreasonably, be perceived as pro-Pelorian. On the eleventh day, she gave an interview limited to the subject of SafeTfield technology. Conn and the interviewer were both careful, and the interview went smoothly.

  The government, having waited more than a week for Conn to do something contrary to the order, sprung. Conn was arrested for violating the order by marketing and promoting Pelorian technology. She was remanded to the Federal Correctional Institution at Dublin, California. The government initiated an audit of all her assets. After two weeks, which set a land speed record for audits, the US District Court ordered those assets frozen, Dyna-Tech prominently among them. There was no money to pay salaries or overhead. It was all tied up by the court.

  Even in a federal women’s prison, Conn was mostly treated with reverence. There were inmates—and guards—who enjoyed the schadenfreude of the world-famous girl wonder behind bars, but enough inmates thought she was badass that she was able to pass her time without any incidents. In fact, her life was intolerably monotonous. She read, she wrote letters, did puzzles. At first, she did not want to be any part of exercise time outside with other inmates, but it wasn’t long before she started running just to keep her muscles working.

  With time to do a lot of thinking, she formulated a theory that stuck with her: there hadn’t been an infiltration of American society by Pelorian avatars at all. Julian the assistant NewsAmerica producer had been paid by the US government to drop his bombshell, in order to establish a pretense for war. Conn knew better than most that the government was capable of just about anything.

  Jody visited her on two occasions, and told her to hang in there. Skylar Reece, Hunter Valence, and other Dyna-Tech officers came once as a group. Otherwise, her visits were mostly from her lawyer. The lawyer, a severe, competent woman named Hannah Ryan, claimed to be doing everything she could to get the freeze of assets lifted enough for Dyna-Tech to at least meet payroll; that result never materialized.

  Yongpo came to see her. They were both warned against conversing in Basalese, but Yongpo had developed enough English proficiency to make simple conversation possible.

  “You are well?”

  “I am. Thank you.”

  “We keep working on fifth-dimensional problem.”

  “I can’t pay you right now.”

  “One or two people do not keep working, but we most do.”

  “How are you going to pay for things? Your rent?”

  “George Tyrell, he said when necessary I come live with him.”

  Conn started to say something, but it caught in her throat. Finally, she asked, “What about the spacecraft?”

  “Almost done. Two more weeks. Contractors not working, but not much left to do. I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Please do.”

  “May we call the spacecraft the Cai Fang?”

  At that, Conn broke down and cried.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Saturn

  March–April, 2036

  The president suspended the writ of habeas corpus under her supposed wartime powers, and Conn was not publicly charged, arraigned, or brought to the surface at all. She was thankful for the ability to see her lawyer and receive visitors.

  The need to meet Dyna-Tech payroll was becoming more urgent as the Bebop got closer to Saturn. Hannah Ryan worked
with NASA to make sure the Saturn mission got the support it needed from the agency instead of Dyna-Tech. Ryan then moved to request yet another hearing on unfreezing Conn’s assets to the extent necessary to meet payroll, support the Saturn mission, and provide maintenance, repair, and support services in space. Her motion, as always, was denied. And in an off-the-record meeting, the federal prosecutor assigned to Conn’s case, Assistant District Attorney William Drury, told Ryan the government was perfectly happy to have Conn in jail and her assets frozen for the foreseeable future.

  “Divestiture,” Ryan said to Conn. “You have to get rid of the company. If you weren’t the owner anymore, I guarantee Drury would unfreeze. He’s clearly under orders to make sure you can’t ever use it. He even told me off the record that he could let you go. The government just doesn’t want you to have the money to make yourself heard whenever you want to.”

  “Then sell it,” Conn said. “But I want to know it’s going somewhere where it won’t be broken up and sold off in pieces. Make sure whoever gets it wants it to keep working.” Conn felt like a failure, surrendering Peo’s legacy to get herself out of jail. But she could at least make sure the company kept going, for some length of time anyway.

  But the process of finding a buyer, even at a lower-than-market price, was long and slow. And it wasn’t happening fast enough. At an update meeting with Ryan, Conn reached back into her paralegal training and pulled out a rabbit: “if I withdraw my defense to Laura’s lawsuit, does she win summary judgment? Giving her everything?”

  “That would be the effect, yes. Let me confirm with Drury that that will satisfy him. But Conn—you’ll have nothing.”

  “I’ll have what I had before Peo died.” Except Peo. “About eight thousand dollars in an IRA, a degree in aerospace engineering, and experience landing on the moon. I’ll be fine.”

  Drury agreed to have the assets unfrozen if Conn didn’t own and didn’t use them. Conn dropped her defense and Laura won her challenge to the will.

  Then, she learned that Drury’s authorization to release her from prison had been overruled.

  Conn’s people would get paid, full back pay if they had shown up for work during the asset freeze. Crews could swap out at Gasoline Alley, where some Dyna-Tech contractors had been effectively stranded. And the Saturn mission would get operational control on the ground. A big win for everybody, all in all.

  Except for the person who gave it all away.

  # # #

  Conn was still a guest of the federal government on April 10 when the Bebop achieved orbit around Saturn. The crew had been seeing the ringed planet, bigger and bigger each day, for weeks as they approached, but Conn’s first sight of it was in a common room where well-behaved inmates were allowed to watch the feeds.

  She had to remember to breathe. The planet was magnificent—would have been magnificent without the rings. But the rings...

  The planet itself was a series of pastel oranges, yellows, golds, pinks, creamy whites, in stripes around its lower half. From the angle the Bebop approached, the northern hemisphere was in shadow, but glowing purple aurorae made a soft accent mark along the northernmost edge. Conn realized belatedly that they might not be looking at Saturn in such a way that north was “up.” But the dark hemisphere looked northern to her.

  The rings were the color of the planet, only in muted sepia. From the angle of approach, they seemed to grow out of the planet’s southern hemisphere and surround the planet boisterously—an exaggerated, cartoon effect. This close to the sunlight reflecting off the planet, there were no stars visible. Saturn’s shadow on the rings was the same deep shade as sky, as if the rings had a chunk taken out of them.

  One of the astronauts superimposed a picture of Earth over the view, then shrunk it roughly to scale—and Conn could barely see it on the prison monitor. Saturn was truly massive, its rings jutting out the distance of several Earths.

  What Conn was seeing and hearing had happened an hour and a half earlier, Saturn being some eighty-one light minutes from Earth, and Dyna-Tech previewing the feed before sending it out to the public. The astronauts were narrating the experience, and their words were captioned on the screen. Though Conn couldn’t hear well, it was clear from the transcription that the astronauts were enjoying themselves. Conn felt happy for them, and a pang of longing to be part of it, any part.

  The camera panned right, and lit upon a smoky, surreal moon, little more than a thumbprint’s smudge. It had a pea soup-green pallor, and Conn guessed it was Titan moments before “Titan” appeared on the feed screen. The camera panned left until Saturn once more filled its view, then zoomed in on a fleck of light that appeared to be underneath the rings. By the time it was done, the rings dominated the top half of the screen with a tiny sphere of ice beneath: “Tethys,” Conn said aloud, as “Tethys” appeared on the screen. They would look for evidence of life on Tethys, although humankind already knew all too well that they were not alone in the universe.

  The feed’s coverage ended, as did the inmates’ privilege of using the common room to watch. The next day, and for several days after, Conn was invited to watch the Saturn coverage with the warden in her office. The warden was sympathetic to Conn’s plight and acknowledged Conn’s role in planning and executing the Saturn mission. Conn was so grateful, she could barely express it.

  Seven days after Conn first saw Saturn in the common room, she was brought to the warden’s office where the NewsAmerica Saturn mission feed was playing. The astronauts had landed on Tethys and emerged from their spacecraft.

  The feed was showing Grant’s helmet cam. The vid stuttered along an icy surface, with pressure suit arms visible. Grant was dragging himself. Where? Back to their spacecraft, most likely. He was crawling. Something catastrophic had happened. Conn’s heart was hammering. She wanted to scream. Grant might already be dead, and Conn wouldn’t know it for an hour and a half.

  Conn’s mind reeled. She was utterly powerless. She knew how Peo must have felt when Conn had been stranded on the moon.

  The feed reader recapped events so far: The three astronauts landed on Tethys, three hours earlier than originally scheduled. (Conn, unbidden, thought about what poor PR management that was.) All three emerged onto the surface as planned and began their initial reconnaissance. At two hundred fifty meters out—a quarter of a kilometer—one of the male astronauts had time to say, “Brownsville, is this one of your—” before the three were crushed.

  Crushed was the word Dyna-Tech used to describe what happened—they had been crushed like aluminum cans. Grant reported that he had survived only because he had crouched at the last second. Dyna-Tech had released the footage of Grant alive and struggling—at least that probably meant they weren’t about to see him die. Dyna-Tech wouldn’t show that to the world.

  In a ragged, panting voice, he described his injuries: his femurs felt like they had separated from his tibiae and fibulae at the knee, his ribs were broken, he had internal injuries he could only guess, his air was leaking, and he could barely see for some dark liquid in his eye that he assumed was blood. Now he was attempting to drag himself back to the spacecraft, which he would then have to seal and pressurize, and get his pressure suit helmet off, before he could evaluate or attempt to treat himself.

  Grant had been crawling for at least fifteen minutes.

  Conn’s eyes were flowing with tears as she listened to the feed reader’s commentary over a continuous loop of Grant dragging himself along the surface of an alien world. They couldn’t get anybody at Dyna-Tech to talk live on the feed—good, Conn thought. She was at once angry and thankful that Dyna-Tech had released this footage in the first place. Even as dire as Grant’s situation was, it gave Conn hope to see him alive. She prayed Dyna-Tech had the discretion not to release the footage of the astronauts getting killed to the public.

  She watched the loop of Grant crawling for another half an hour. Then she had to go back to her cell. She protested, begging to be allowed to stay, but it wasn’t p
ossible. A clearly sympathetic warden said her hands were tied, and promised that if anything happened she would let Conn know.

  Back in her cell, the rage, fear, guilt, and grief she felt overwhelmed her. She had sent Callie Leporis and Al Claussen to their deaths. Maybe Grant to his. And Grant was suffering much more than the other two had. She remembered every harsh word she’d said to him, every callous thought she’d had.

  She would never get to take it all back.

  With a heartbreaking keen, she began to cry. She cried for hours.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Do Something

  April 18, 2036

  Conn’s eyes were red and raw, and stung in the dry air of her cell. It had been a long night. Dyna-Tech reported that Grant made it to the spacecraft, sealed it, pressurized it, and removed his helmet.

  But there would be no happy ending to this story. Grant was still alive, but for how long, no one was willing to speculate. It might have been better for him to die instantly, as Al Claussen and Callie Leporis had.

  The world was on a death watch, as surely as Conn had been for Peo the night Peo died. Conn’s innermost heart had convinced her then that Peo would wake up and get better. There was no convincing any part of her now that Grant could survive.

  For the time being, it was reported that he was in and out of consciousness, any movement an ordeal. That meant he could barely evaluate his injuries, let alone properly treat them. If he was capable of so much as stabilizing himself, he would then have to summon the strength to lift off from Tethys and set a course for home, precise work meant to be done by three astronauts, as seriously injured as he was. Then he would have to survive without medical attention for more than two years.

  A guard came to her cell to get her to authorize a waiting visitor from Dyna-Tech. That seemed highly unusual—Conn would have thought that adding somebody to the short approved visitor’s list would take a week’s worth of paperwork. Conn didn’t recognize his name, Tip Gerniss, or his picture. Whoever he was, he’d convinced the warden that it was extremely urgent that he see Conn.